The Witch, the Cathedral

stop me!”

Lucas came and stood over me, fists on his hips. “What makes you think this wizard really does plan to destroy his gorgos,” he demanded of Paul, “if he hasn’t just hidden it somewhere and substituted a frog to deceive us? Don’t you think it more likely that he is planning to call up even more monsters?”

I squinted at him suspiciously from under half-closed eyelids. Lucas had seen the monster before any of us. Even if this was merely due to excellent eyesight, he had certainly moved rapidly to take advantage of the opportunity to discredit me.

The dean looked across at him. “Then go with him, Prince,” he suggested.

Startled, I pushed myself up on an elbow. Although I had certainly not planned to take Lucas with me, if I did I could keep an eye on him. And it might be good for him to see how useful and indeed necessary wizards were for the western kingdoms. “Go pack some clean socks,” I told him quickly, “and blankets and enough food for all of us for two weeks.”

Lucas hesitated, a hard curl to his lip. But he was rapidly losing the momentum that would allow him to refuse. “Do you not think it your duty?” the dean asked him sternly. “Do you not, as royal heir, need to witness the destruction of a monster that almost destroyed the major city of your kingdom?”

“Of course, Father,” Lucas said, flustered and scowling.

The two princes started to leave together, then Paul stopped. “Wizard! Is there going to be room for Bonfire?”

“Of course there isn’t going to be room for a horse,” I said in exasperation. “Tell the knights from Yurt to exercise your stallion every day, and he’ll be fine. And send a message to your mother to tell her where we’re going. Give her everyone’s love.”

The doctor arrived as the princes clattered out. He clucked over me, putting ointment on the burns and pronouncing none of my ribs cracked, after an examination that I was convinced cracked several.

As he left again and the dean prepared to follow, I put a hand on the latter’s arm. At least the bishop’s death and the monster’s attack seemed to have made Joachim lose track of whatever embarrassing questions he might once have been going to ask me about how the cathedral cantor came to be struck in the rear by a book of spells. “What do you expect me to do with Prince Lucas?” I demanded.

He cocked an eyebrow at me. “I have no idea. But if he did not go he would be here, worrying the cathedral chapter about the election of the new bishop, becoming increasingly irritable because he did not leap as Paul did at the kind of adventure he thinks is the function of the aristocracy. His younger brother would have needed no such prodding. And I have noticed this about you, Daimbert. You are at your best when everyone has been caught off balance, because you improvise better than anyone.” At the moment I felt at my worst, but I did not interrupt. “You need to talk to Prince Lucas, to find out why he is accusing you of a wizardly conspiracy, and now will be your chance.”

“But suppose he had refused to go?”

“It is his duty. And after he announced himself as protector of the Church, he could not very well refuse a suggestion from the man who is now the most powerful religious leader in the twin kingdoms.”

I lay back down again. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry the bishop died, and I’m sorry I set your tower on fire.”

He looked at me a moment and nodded gravely without speaking.

“Thank you for saving me from Lucas and from a riot.”

Joachim gave me another long look. He did not smile, but at least his face looked as though he might once before have smiled in his life. “Thank you for saving us all from the monster. If Prince Lucas wants to incite a riot, he will have to do better than that.” Then he was gone.

When at last, toward dusk, the air cart landed in front of the cathedral, I hobbled out to it with Paul’s support. Several hours’ sleep had made me feel, if not exactly better, at least as though living might be worthwhile. The art cart was the winged skin of a purple flying beast that had originally come, long ago, from the northernmost land of magic. Even after the beast had died its skin kept on flying if governed by magic commands.

Paul looked at the frog to which I continued to cling. “Why don’t you just kill it here?”

“You’re welcome to try. But don’t cut the rope.”

Paul set the frog on the paving stones and hesitated, his sword in his hand. I could tell he did not like killing a helpless creature. But he trusted me, and in a moment he lifted his blade and drove it down against the kicking green form.

His sword sprang back so abruptly it was jerked from his grip. Paul recovered it with a startled look. “What have you done to this frog? Its skin is made of iron!”

“That’s what I was afraid of,” I said. “You can’t really transform creatures of wild magic. Spells are the orderly channeling of magical forces, but creatures like this cut right across order. The gorgos is now no bigger than a frog and looks like a frog, but I’m afraid it’s still a gorgos.”

“But is it going to start looking and acting like a monster again?”

“I hope not-or at least not right away. That’s why I need to get it back to the land of magic before it can recover its powers.” I wondered sourly just how powerful the hidden wizard here might be, whether his magic might even be strong enough to bind two separate monsters at the same time. In that case, he might bring out the second while I was off taking care of the first. But I forced myself to dismiss the thought. If my opponent was that good, there was nothing I could do about it.

In the bottom of the air cart was a small box, absolutely black. I tried a gentle probing spell, the first spell of any sort I had tried for hours. It was a binding box, set about with spells to secure whatever was in it. Zahlfast must have decided to include it. I pushed the frog inside and slammed the lid.

Paul boosted me over the edge of the cart, and Lucas climbed in without a word. While I was searching for the words of the Hidden Language to guide the cart, a short, wiry figure came toward us from the huts. It was the foreman of the construction crew.

He leaned casually against the side of the cart, not quite looking at me. A pack was slung over his back. “So you’re going up to the land of magic,” he said at last. “Have you ever been there?”

“No.” Normally I would have tried to justify or explain, but now the monosyllable sufficed.

There was another pause. “Would you like a guide?”

There was more here, I thought, than helpful concern for a confused wizard, but I was too tired to work it out. “Have you been there?”

“Not right up in the wild magic. But I come from the borderlands.”

“Borderlands?” asked Paul.

“Of course, lad. You don’t think the western kingdoms stop at a line on the map and the land of magic starts right there, do you? There’s a stretch of territory several hundred miles wide in which the lands of men and the land of magic penetrate each other. Some places you can go just a few miles from an ordinary village to the castle of a will-o’-the-wisp.”

Paul’s face lit up. “It would be like stepping into fairyland!”

I kept a dignified silence. “Well,” said the foreman, “do you want a guide or not?”

“Of course,” I said. The foreman could prove useful, and I wanted to know how he had recognized a fanged gorgos. “But aren’t you needed here?”

“I’ve been talking to the provost, and he seems to feel there’s no use trying to get much work done in the next few weeks, before the new bishop is elected. My lads can repair on their own the damage the gorgos did to the tower.”

“Then climb in,” I said. “It’s time to start.”

IV

Dusk rose from the narrow streets of the city, punctuated only at intervals by the yellow gleam of lanterns,